


no taming demons

by haipollai



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Destroy Ending, F/M, Families of Choice, Hospitalization, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-17
Updated: 2014-11-17
Packaged: 2018-02-25 17:19:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2629961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haipollai/pseuds/haipollai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James' throat feels tight looking at her. She's unconscious, unnaturally small. "Come on Lola," he mumbles. The doctors say it's probably too late, she was a number in a field clinic without any real care for too long. Two years before there was a chance to test the DNA of Jane Doe Number 4531.</p>
            </blockquote>





	no taming demons

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Renne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Renne/gifts).



James' throat feels tight looking at her. She's unconscious, unnaturally small. "Come on Lola," he mumbles. The doctors say it's probably too late, she was a number in a field clinic without any real care for too long. Two years before there was a chance to test the DNA of Jane Doe Number 4531. 

A lot can change in two years, a lot has. James gets carefully to his feet, still unsteady on the prosthetic leg. Steve is waiting outside for him and doesn't say anything as they fall into step. 

"No change," Vega finally says. Steve's fingers curl around his elbow, not quite reassurance but sort of support. "Any word..."

"Liara will be here in a week. And Garrus- Palaven is almost as bad off as Earth but he said..." Steve stops them when they're outside. It's a sunny day, James leans into Steve. Despite the sun, James feels cold. 

"Come on, Esteban. Can't be moping like this."

Steve's arm shifts to wrap around his waist. "You're the downer here," he teases. 

"Suck my dick, I'm an angel."

It gets a laugh out of Steve that surprises James, he feels his own lips curl up, caught in the brief moment. If he can get Cortez to laugh maybe they're not so bad off. 

-

Her eyes fix flatly on him when he enters, she's awake but not seeing. It's disconcerting but he's not a coward. He faced against the monsters in the dark, and he can help his commander do the same. 

"Morning, Lola." 

Her eyes close again. He talks slowly at first but picks up as he gets comfortable. The doctors say he should talk about good things, happy memories but they don't have many of those together. 

He ends up talking about the Reapers. 

-

They're worried about indoctrination. The doctors are too professional to say so but the fear is there. Even worse is the fear from the brass. Hackett insists it's crap, Shepard is too strong. 

The dead Cerberus left behind have been studied and analyzed and no one can argue against the scars on her brain. 

Hackett goes to visit her. She’s strung up with tubes, liquids being pumped in and out while her body struggles to heal itself. It hasn't done that well in the past year, he's not sure he has much hope for the future. But he knows Vega is outside the room, Vakarian is on the fastest shuttle from Palaven and the rest must be close at hand. 

They will not accept hopelessness and there is hope as long as her body lives. "Wish we knew who you will be when you wake," he mumbles. 

There are guards waiting along with Vega, a worst case scenario. If Shepard has been indoctrinated the knowledge can't go far. Her actions at the end must never be called into question. If she must die for the world to carry on, Hackett knows the sacrifice must be made. He thinks she would prefer it that way. 

He hopes so because that's the standing order and he needs to believe she would understand. 

Hackett salutes her even though she's not awake and turns to leave. 

-

No one is there when she first truly opens her eyes and she closes them again, wondering if this is death. 

-

Vega carefully gets to his feet when he sees Garrus marching down the hall. A guard follows quickly behind, trying to convince Garrus to stop and go through proper procedure. His eyes fall on Vega and and he looks hopeful, as if Vega would support his side. 

He holds out a hand to Garrus. "Took you long enough."

The guards face falls realizing the support he wanted wasn't coming. 

"Don't blame me your relay has worse traffic then the Citadel wards during a raid." His grip on Vega's hand was tight, giving away all the panic he refused to show. "Tell me."

Vega looks around Garrus at the still hovering guard. "Get lost, kid."

The guard looks eager to follow the order and get away from the Turian. Vega waits for him to disappear before sitting down again. He's exhausted and happier than he wants to admit that Garrus is here to be the responsible one. 

"Doctors say she's finally showing improvement," he says. Garrus makes an an annoyed noise. "They're terrified she's gonna wake up and kill us all."

"They think-"

"No one knows what happened up there!" He grimaces at how harsh it comes out. Garrus blinks at him. Vega sucks in a sharp breath. "Gotta be prepared for the worst, man."

Garrus stares past him at the door leading to her room. He looks like he wants to sprint to her but his feet remain stuck.

-

She sits on the edge of the bed, legs dangling like broken sticks over the side. She insisted everyone get out, this she had to do alone. 

She had to-

The door opens and she jerks as if expecting an attack. Garrus lets himself in and comes over to sit beside her. 

"I told everyone-"

"Respectfully, I'm going to ignore that order." Garrus holds out a hand. "Don’t be stupid."

"My head's still screwed on wrong." She frowns at him, there are things that need to be said but she takes his hand, his palm rough against her skin. It's simple and familiar. Easy. "Fucking hell, let's get this over with." She refuses to lean on him even as her legs shake, weak from being confined to bed. 

She lets him take her weight on the short walk back. 

"I was reading about human customs," he says, not commenting on her struggles and the fear etched on her face. 

"Oh yea?" She hates the relief in her voice when she's finally off her feet. "Ask me about marriage and I'm going to shoot you."

"So dramatic."

She snorts and leans into him, letting him take her weight. “So what were you reading about?” Her eyes are already slipping closed and her words slur together. The doctors have her on some cocktail of drugs because if they don’t, the pain becomes overwhelming. She won’t scream, she refuses but they panicked when she almost bit through her tongue.

“I don’t remember,” Garrus says, or Shepard thinks it’s what he says. She’s falling asleep and can’t seem to stop herself.

-

"This seems unfair." 

Shepard grins and shifts her weight to a fighting stance. "Chicken?"

Vega scowls and raises his fists but she can see he's still favoring his leg. "No, better be able to put your money where your mouth is with words line that."

She takes a few steps closer. Despite her bold attitude she still feels shaky on her feet. Still weak from so long unconscious. She hates it. 

Vega's first punch almost catches her off guard but her instincts are still there and she blocks his blow. 

They're not who they used to be. Shepard remembers a different fight between the two of them that had felt more like a test. Proving herself to him before she could truly take command. This isn't like that, they're both too broken. Just wanting to prove they can stay on their feet. 

Soldiers until the end. 

Shepard feels bruised and drained when they finally stumble apart. She sinks gratefully to the ground and a moment later Vega drops beside her, a water bottle for each of them. 

"What happened?" She asks, looking at his leg. She's resisted asking before but here is impossible to ignore the join of prosthesis and flesh. 

He laughs but the sound is flat. "Fucking stupid. Watching you get to the spire didn't notice the husk until it had its teeth in me. Got infected had to lose it."

"Only your leg."

"Been hard to get used to."

She takes takes a long swallow of water. "I know."

He gets himself back to his feet, unsteady at first but he forces himself. She can see him gritting his teeth until he feels stable. "Ready for round two?" 

"Thought you'd never ask."

-

Steve lets Garrus stay in a guest bedroom. Vega is grateful for the Turian's presence, somehow it makes everything feel normal. Vega doesn't want to think too deeply about how fucked up his own perceptions must be if he needs the old Normandy crew around to feel normal. 

Liara finally arrives a few days later. Shepard is still stuck in the hospital so she comes to the house first. 

Garrus has gotten himself appointed some kind of advisor to keep himself busy but he's still home when Liara arrives. 

Vega has never tried to figure out their relationship, he knows it's not always smooth. But Garrus pulls her into an embrace. 

"No retreating into your files," Garrus says. 

Vega hangs back with Steve, leaning against him. 

"You are in no position to judge me," Liara says stiffly but doesn't elaborate. She doesn't need to even if they don't know the specifics, the end was harder than they were ready for. Believing they had lost Shepard seemed too high a price to pay. 

"We have a whole house to fill," Steve speaks up. "You're welcome if you want. Only if you want of course. I've heard the Asari diplomats have a pretty sweet set up."

Liara smiles, the same awkward twist of her lips as if still uncomfortable with living breathing people. Or as if she's planning something. "We?"

"Yea, we," Vega says. "Don't worry we're good at keeping it down." Steve groans in annoyance and Liara’s cheeks darken to almost purple but something in the room ease into something like normal. 

-

Garrus finds Shepard on the hospital roof. Her hair hasn't been cut in years and falls in tangled curls around her face. The wind picks it up and twists it, tangling it even worse but she makes no effort to reach up and control it. Her eyes are fixed on some point far away over the half rebuilt skyline. The old buildings still stick out like jagged teeth. The entire earth ready to swallow them whole.

He approaches her from the side so she isn't taken by surprise. The wind has given her skin a warm flush. For the first time since he's come back, since he first saw her in the hospital bed, she looks healthy. 

"Liara came to see me," she says, cocking her head to look at him. "Heard you two hugged."

"I heard she had immersed herself in the Shadow Broker." He rests his hand on her shoulder, still too thin. The look of health is only an illusion. "The Shadow Broker is not what the galaxy needs."

Shepard laughs, rough and hard. "Who the fuck knows what the galaxy needs?" She closes her eyes against the wind, head tilting back. She is still a goddess of war, condensed and folded to fit into a body not her own. "Docs say I repressed my own memories of the Catalyst."

"Healing comes first. A warrior must stay sane."

She shrugs. "I guess so." Her eyes open and she looks straight at him. "But what the fuck is sane anymore?" Garrus has no answer for her. The silence drags out and she looks back to the sky. "I remember the bodies," she whispers like a confession. "I think I always will."

-

Shepard is finally released and she shows up at the door to Steve and James' place without any warning or ceremony. 

-

"It's like living in a damn hotel," Vega grumbles. His cereal is gone again, probably eaten by Garrus. 

Steve shakes his head and presses a mug of coffee into his hand. "It's like being back in barracks and you love it."

He smirks and grabs Steve's wrist to drag him closer. "Te amo."

"What a sweet talker I'm so blessed," he says dryly. His arm is around Vega's shoulder though and his lips brush against his neck. Steve doesn't say I love you and James isn't sure he cares, it's not always about love. 

Shepard walks in to them like that but doesn't say a word. They make no effort to pull apart. When she turns around to leave again with two cups of coffee carefully balanced in one hand, he thinks he hears a murmured congrats. 

-

She's not sad, she knows that but the difficulty of getting to the life everyone expects her to have is like a heavy weight in her chest. A vague disappointment that rears its head when she can’t seem to get moving. Her breath comes short and quick like she might drown, like her lungs have been left tight and mangled.

Garrus pulls her up to lean her head on his shoulder and carefully digs his fingers into her back, massaging until her lungs open up. Until she has breath enough to move her limbs.

“You shouldn’t have to carry me.”

“You’ve done the same.”

She thinks sometimes she doesn’t want to be Commander Shepard, the face of a war. She doesn’t want death, there is nothing she would do differently. But she wants to breath freely and even here surrounded by her crew, she feels like she’s been left to choke. Garrus’ hands move over her back, just up and down as she breathes. 

They have seen too much but she kisses him, determined to come back stronger. It doesn't matter if someone can carry her, she will make her own feet move forward.


End file.
